SEA05FA169 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Emmett Municipal Airport (S78) to Cascade Airport (U70)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05FA169
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 3 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N2082Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Emmett Municipal Airport (S78), Emmett, IDTo Cascade Airport (U70), Cascade, ID
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who was en route to an airport where he and his passengers were going to participate in a family gathering, was maneuvering the aircraft at a low altitude in mountainous terrain about four miles from the destination airport. While flying up a slope toward a saddle in a ridge, the pilot failed to maintain clearance from the forest below, and the aircraft contacted a sixty foot tall conifer tree about four feet from its top. The aircraft then impacted a number of other trees, descended into the ground, and was almost totally consumed by fire. The saddle in the ridge was approximately 300 feet higher than the accident site, and about one-third mile further along the flight track. The investigation determined that the pilot was maneuvering in an area of gusty winds while at a density altitude of over 10,000 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a stand of conifer trees during low altitude maneuvering in mountainous terrain. Factors include the mountainous/hilly terrain, gusty winds, a high density altitude, and maneuvering at a low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05FA169
- Event ID
- 20050831X01348
- Case number
- SEA05FA169
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-08-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ff12c4d85741ec1aec5c15d24fd187f8770b5df68352cb53a90030d9adf99061; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:56:04.089Z.